Cloning

REUTERS: French Parliament Backs Human Cloning Ban

Good. I don't think I know a single French person whom I'd like to see there being more than one of. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of any French whom I'd even like there being one of.

All 191 U.N. members agree on a treaty that would prohibit cloning of human beings.

Human beings? Based on their dismal behavior regarding the parallel resolution to grant the same respect to Israeli children and civilians as the Palestinian children and civilians, that's a pretty wide loophole for many UN members to drive through.

 The prize pool increases again...

Amazon just did a deposit for the month, so I spread another $15 around the various prizes. The pot just keeps growing and growing and growing... those voluntary contributions are much appreciated and are going to a worthy cause:

Right back to you on January 1, 2005.

A few more bonus prizes are in the works, too.

I know what you're thinking... if you submit early, you might miss out on some horrific near-death tragedy like what happened to Ozzy that should increase the odds on him for 2004.

But then the same could happen to you. Your picks will be held up by your own near-mortal wounds, forced to wait until January to turn in your picks. You'd be too late... too late... too late...

Turn in your picks today. You'll sleep easier.

 We all scream

Ziggy told me that some friends were having a party, but apparently it got rescheduled, so my plans for tonight make for a nice quiet clean sweep for the week.

Just me and Andy Rooney for one more evening?

I don't think so.

Out of habit, I hit up Shepherd Square. Cabo's may be long gone, but the echoes remain.

I wandered by Wherehouse to see what used DVDs they had in stock. Picked up One Hour Photo to see what creepiness I'd missed.

Then I stopped by Amy's Ice Cream. Lone Star Beer Ice Cream?

Um... no. Stuck with Amaretto Almond.

Most excellent.

 You figure it out

EconoPundit turned me on to the FAIRMODEL from Yale University. It's a way of estimating the economy and elections based on historic data. A lot of it is just messy econometrics to me, but I also accept that mechanical engineering works without bothering to understand the details of stress and strain. I tried the cool calculator for the 2004 election and I keep coming up with Bush winning in the 58-61% range with most results around 60%, i.e., a landslide (but not as good as Reagan's). This is a fun toy to tinker with.

 With

There's a very subtle slip of the tongue from Prince Bandar's visit to Houston than what Meryl saw in The Jerusalem Post.

The Houston Chronicle apparently got a sit-down with the Kingdom's chief bagman and bullshit artist, and the story in the Chronicle ends with the following:

"We are in a fight to the death with terrorism," he said.

Bandar speaks English better than most Americans do, so he should know all about subtleties. He also knows about double-meanings.

Sure, there's the meaning that the Saudis are fighting against terrorists. After all, there's some seriously deranged screwballs (some of their own creation) now trying to take potshots at The House of Saud or their loyal flocks at various Saudi shrines.

However, there's also the meaning of with that suggests correctly that they have been waging a fight to the death utilizing terrorism. If you're looking for clues as to who their enemy is, a big empty hole in Manhattan is a good place to start.

That Saudi jackoff bastard was in my city. How I long for the armoa of a thousand chemical plants in Pasadena to quickly wash away the fetid, lingering afterstench of the House of Saud.

 Challah

Yes, I plan on doing at least one loaf in the oven with the twists. I firmly believe that Challah is Challah, twists or not. Johnathan at BIU had a problem with that last year, but I'll leave it to a meaningless poll to decide:

I think the whole "Twists" issue is half-baked.

NOTE:
Remember... 2 eggs are for the dough and the third is for the glazing. Don't throw all three eggs in the mix to begin with and then wonder what you're supposed to make the poppy seeds stick with.

Yes, I've made this mistake myself.

 Classic Photo

Davezilla takes the cake with his goofy cat photo.

No photos of the ATS cats today. Everybody's hiding after a quick run-through with the vacuum. I figure I'll have to vacuum again right before my wife gets back from the airport tomorrow night because the cats know to the precise second when's the best time to smear food across the carpet or do a butt-stripe to welcome Mommy home.

 RFID? RTFM!

n what can only be desribed as a badly-edited rewrite of a credit card industry press release, CNN copy-pastes this AP piece of crap:

AP: Radio-fueled credit cards could end swipe

The familiar process of buying something with a credit card -- handing the plastic to the clerk or swiping it yourself, then waiting for approval and signing the receipt -- could be headed the way of the mechanical brass cash register.

Stop.

Whenever I hear about some tried-and-true technology going away for a new one some company's come up with, my balls start to itch and I immediately shout INDUSTRY HYPE! A reporter's been rooked into some publicity agent's snakeoil sales pitch, and we're all dragged along for a ride in their flying car of the future.

For more than a year, MasterCard and American Express have been testing "contactless" versions of their credit cards. The cards need only be held near a special reader for a sale to go through -- though the consumer can still get a receipt.

The card companies say the system is much faster and safer because the card never leaves a customer's hand.

Yeah, and lots of people's car keys never leave their pockets, but they still walk up to an empty parking space with a spray of broken glass.

So the card never leaves a customer's hand? What kind of transaction are they thinking of... are we thinking of the same kind of restaurant? Here's a picture of a customer using this technology at a fine fancy dining establishment according to the credit card companies:

A man purchases a meal at a Carls, Jr. restaurant
using his American ExpressPay key.

Oh, come on. Didn't any reporter have the sense to raise their hand and ask a question? Not a single challenge to the garbage being shoved down their throat? Not a one? Or was this reporter completely oblivious to the obvious question:

"HOW DOES THIS TRANSACTION BEHAVIOR WORK IN A SIT-DOWN RESTAURANT?"

Sheesh. Do they not have sit-down restaurants where the reporter came from? Were they raised and educated in a city where it was all just Carl's and McDonalds and other counter-based fast food?

Man, they must be awfully fat.

Let's think this one out. We're all using these fancy-schmancy radio-cards. We don't need to swipe anymore, the companies tell us. Never leaves our hand, top-notch security because the hunk of plastic is in our hand all the time.

That's security?

Fine. Unless sit-down restaurants and bars plan on having checkpoint-style exits for customers to "wave" their radio-cards or they want to go through the expense of putting readers at every table, this will not fly. And even if they put readers at every table, well, now you've got the hassle of having to network them all together. Lots of cords to trip over and tangle up when moving tables around.

Wireless, you say? Gee, that just broadcasts the signal yet again. And it doesn't take much for someone to put a signal interceptor near the reader to gather up numbers and usernames and passwords to run through the system later to "add on" to order.

And what about situations where RFID isn't practical to deploy? What if you've got a booth at a reniassance faire or some other jerkwater town where they still use the bam-chunka roller-impression-with-carbons method of logging transactions and batching them up for execution later?

So who's asking these questions? Who's questioning this technology-for-technology's sake effort? Who's replacing the batteries of the bullshit detector and gawking at the needle pegging in the red zone?

Certainly not the reporter. They just report what's given to them and they bleat like a sheep on to the screen or page. And even if they could, well, I'm assuming that the reporter was just too tired from the big free meal they got at the five-star Carl's on the credit card company's dime.

Dimwits. DIMWITS!

 Joining the dis-astros

Two pitchers do not a team make.

NY POST: Yanks Texas Two-Step
HOUSTON CHRONICLE; With Pettitte signing done, Hunsicker says Astros still looking to improve team

Okay, so Hunsicker bought himself a new toy. Big deal. They'll utilize him as ineffectively as the rest of the resources and talent (or lack thereof) at their disposal

Case-in-point: Mabel Lugo. Hands down, she was the best thing to happen to the Astros in 2003. Julio Lugo had numbers that qualified him for washing cars in the parking lot, and they stuck with him anyway, stinking up the gap between second and third and keeping first base clean of nasty soil stains from his cleats. Once he was out, his replacement racked up some decent stats from short.

Management that waits for its pathetic no-good shortstop to beat his wife in the parking lot of the stadium before taking him out of the starting lineup is not what I'd call an effective management team. Action, not reaction, is required.

As long as Drayton McClaine is under the false impression that he's morally obligated to make sure that September Sandbaggers Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell both retire in Astros uniforms at the expense of the rest of the roster's performance, all he's doing is pissing away his money on pitching.

Now that Billy Wagner's gone, who among the dust and tumbleweeds in the bullpen can keep a one or two run lead from vanishing? When Rocket or Pettitte shut out the other team for seven, who will finish them off? Who among the Astros will score the clutch run to take advantage of that pitching?

Oh well. Those shuttle patches on their shoulders looked nice, didn't they?

 Follow-up to Senator Paul Simon's death

Best reaction so far:

"Since he's going to be buried in Illinois, he can still vote Democratic next fall."

 One year after The Three Stooges With Tits

Has Time announced their Man Of The Year yet?

They fucked up big time last year. I'd do a follow-up on the meaninglessness of the efforts of these three poster-girls, the Charlies Angels JV Squad, but there's nothing to follow-up. They didn't make a mouses squat worth of difference. Ken Lay is still out there, Bernie Ebbers ain't paying his huge bill back, and the 3,000 who died at WTC and the Pentagon are still dead (while Wacky Zachy still lives).

My prediction for this year is George Bush, but TIME might go all politically correct on us and highlight Colin Powell's continued defiance of Bush.

If TIME selects the five quys from Queer Eye or some other meaningless trivial troupe of pop-culture twits, I'm going to Howard Luce's grave and taking a shit on the headstone.

 Just in case you didn't know this stuff already

Here's some old posts that might answer your questions about Hannukah and other seasonal crap:

• The Menorah FAQ
• What do the four symbols on a dreidel mean
• Why wait until sundown to light the candles

I'm sure there's more, but I can't read some of this stuff without having to stick my head in the toilet and scream.

 Mission-creep

REUTERS: Summit makes call to 'wire up' world

It kinda makes you wonder what's in the water in Geneva that makes people think this shit up:

The declaration committed them to using telecommunications technologies, such as the Worldwide Web and cellular telephones, to boost economic growth and meet United Nations development targets for eradicating extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.

Wait... where do these imbeciles get off declaring an intention of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty by 2015 at an information conference?

What the fuck do these savages think the Internet is? Do they think they can just lay some Cat-5E cable to their mud hut, suck on the end of it, and food comes out?

This is about as stupid as some jerkwater bleeding-heart Commiefornia liberal atrophy-wife city council trying to "send a message to President Bush" by voting against a war in Iraq (who's delegate attended the summit and gave an interesting lament on how dictatorship and totalitarianism deprived his country's involvement in communications and wireless advancement, and thus economic/social advancement).

It wouldn't be a UN meeting without Jew-hate, of course, and making the Jews sit at the back of the digital bus is the least they can do to express their contempt for the one country in their region that's done the most to foster online development.

Here's the conference web site and the list of speakers. It's interesting how Mr. Azzam Alahmad of the Palestinians (who started off with an attack on Israel for virtually imprisoning the world's most popular terrorist) and pretty much every Islamic/Arabic totalitarian shithole spoke before Yaakov Levy of Israel, who's country has done more for online internetworking, communication, and development than all of those Mecca-facing terrorism-sponsoring morons have done combined.

Oh, and Lebanon and Syria openly blamed Israel for a lack of econonomic development in communications. That whole "Occupation" thing, you know. Go look up their statements or, if you have a strong stomach, suffer through the whiny translations of their streamed speeches.

Maybe they need to listen to the Iraqi statement a little closer... and then look at their own Arab dictators standing by the firewalls, sifting and sniffing for their digital enemies and jailing them or even slitting their throats to silence them in the middle of the night.

The most effective thing many of these Arab coutnries could do to foster digital proliferation and freedom would be to strangle their leaders with lengths of Cat-5, stringing up their rotting corpses for all to see. Live on webcams.

Hell, make it pay-per-view, and you might even be able to afford new keyboards.

 Did you see a ghost?

Try not to be too shocked, but it looks like I'll actually be going to a Weblogger Meetup here in Houston. Usually it's some Downtown shithole that makes it convenient for those twits who like to sit an hour in traffic both ways to work Downtown.

It's not worth $29 for me to convince people that Volcano, Kay's, Velvet Melvin, and other less-than-fine establishments with quarterway-decent parking in my area are worth the effort.

This confuses me... escaping the hellhole of Downtown traffic for the hellhole of Village traffic and shitty parking? Whoever came up with that idea, I hope they eventually overcome their stroke.

I'm sure that it will be announced at H-Town Blogs sometime in January, if at all.

When the first few meetups took place, I was in the habit of bringing home-baked bread and giving it away to some random person. Since I will be walking to this meetup directly from work, hitting a few pints well in advance of the arrival of other ne'er-do-wells, it will take a lot of effort to hide any loaves from my co-workers that I would otherwise bring to the meetup.

What would really be neat would be an exchange of blog-crap. Each person brings a trinket with their blog's logo on it and round-robin exchanges gifts with others so everyone gets another blogger's crap. After a few meet-ups, everybody's got a collection of the hometown wares.

Nah. That would take planning. Never happens with H-Town blogs.

But a man can dream, can't he? Maybe next year.

 Morons

"We're all living in a world of morons. How you choose to deal with those morons is how you determine whether or not in life you end up being happy or miserable."

- William S. Burroughs

 The competition

If you really like to participate in Dead Pools, then Exeunt Omnes is another you might want to participate in.

There's lots of blank pages in the Notebook Of Doom here at ATS, waiting for you to e-mail in your 15 picks.

UPDATE:
Another deadpool.
And another
And yet another

 Andrew Sullivan is not my martyr (and Jesus is not my messiah)

Something that Andrew Sullivan said in his most recent begging-post raised an eyebrow:

In fact, it has largely displaced a large amount of my paid work. If you care about the site, the viability of blogging as a professional enterprise, and want to be a part of it, please throw a little change into the tip-jar.

If the blog displaces opportunities for better-paying writing jobs, that's your decision. Don't play upon the guilt of those whom you consider blog-fans, shamign them into opening up their e-wallets because their love for your work is putting you in the poorhouse.

If you can't afford to keep up the lifestyle there and the Big Apple is taking a big bite of of your meager savings, move. Find cheaper digs. Cut your expenses. There's lots of cheap places to hang your hat in Flyover Country, and we get broadband out here, too.

Don't anoint yourself as some Patron Saint of Blogging or Blog Martyr and say that you're the living symbol of the paid-to-blog pipedream we'd all love to believe in. Don't try to fashion yourself as a blog-Jesus, cut down by the rotten pricks at the New York Times, playing upon our mutual hate for them, but using your ressurection to build... what? Some Hell's Kitchen ministry you can abandon some day when you're called back to the cathedral to preach? That's about as shameless as Jesse Jackson's whoring of the mantle of MLK, Jr. while he's fucking his assistants.

You're not some up-and-coming writer trying to rise through the amateur ranks. You're a fallen star, a professional writer. You're a professional who's let his fifteen minutes expire and is now trying to re-invent himself in a "new" media.

You're slumming, pal. The Blogopshere is a slum to you.

Not to me. It's the suburb of the Mass Media City, where everybody's fled to because they can stand the pollution and traffic and madness.

You're fooling a lot of people out there, pretending to be one of them, but you're not fooling me. So I'm sending $20 to a blogger who's a real grassroots up-through-the-ranks blogger who ought to be paid for what he does. I'm giving to Charles Johnson of LGF.

I suggest that everybody else who believes in the hope of a true pure grassroots blogging professional turn their back on Andrew "Poor Poor Pitiful Me Sullivan" and do the same.

[There's more to read... click to read the extended entry]

 It's too bad that Mike Royko is still dead

BLOOMBERG: Gruff Billy Goat Tavern of Chicago repels invader

Billy Goat Inc., owner of the Chicago tavern that inspired a Saturday Night Live skit featuring the late John Belushi, reached an agreement Friday that will keep Cheeburger Cheeburger restaurants out of the Chicago area.

The accord settles the trademark-infringement suit by Billy Goat Tavern owner Sam Sianis. Sianis claimed the Cheeburger Cheeburger name would confuse customers who associate his tavern with the Saturday Night Live routine, which portrayed short-order cooks with Greek accents yelling, "Cheezborger, Cheezborger."

Cheeburger Cheeburger agreed not to open restaurants using that name within 125 miles of Chicago, lawyers for both sides said.

Under the agreement, its trademark for the Cheeburger Cheeburger name won't apply in greater Chicago and Sianis will seek to register the phrase "cheezborger, cheezborger" in the area.

Look how bland that is. Is that how you report a story out of Chicago about a Chicago legend being threatened by franchised invaders?

No.

Royko would be pissed that some franchise operation was stealing Sam's tagline, heaping column after column of scorn and ridicule upon the interlopers and blasphemers. He'd curse them in some obscure way or have a talk with Slats Grobnik about burning every one of their franchises down.

He'd also come up with some high praise for Sam in coming up with an overly generous settlement of the dispute and letting both sides go about their business.

How many of these other stories about the lawsuit and settlement do you think were actually written in Billy Goat?

None. And that's the tragedy... Royko would have written or at least noddled over each of them there, soaking up the greasy atmosphere for inspiration.

If news is a conversation, as Jeff Jarvis says, then our conversation-partner is not only dull, but made up of several heads of the same hydra babbling emotionless trivia to each other.

That's what happens when information becomes a marketable product for mass-consuption. You bland it down like a McBurger, remove all spice, and ship it out fast. No time to savor

We miss you, Mike.

 Dave Still Laughs At "Uma...Oprah..."

REUTERS: Oprah, Letterman Locked in Invitation Stalemate

Oprah Winfrey has countered Dave Letterman's repeated invites to appear on his show with one of her own.

Oprah doesn't want to be on Dave's show because every time she has been on his show, she left feeling "like the butt of his jokes".

And what a big butt she is...

Folks, some days they just write themselves...

 Ho Ho Ho

That'a wrap, Santa!

 No laughing matter

Okay, so I joked about Keiko the Killer Whale getting hunted in Norway, getting a job, and falling seriously ill.

Now Keiko's dead. That's right. Willy is now Life-free Willy.

So, anybody have any Killer Whale recipes?

 Who watches this fucking shit anyway?

WASHINGTON POST: Nasty Language on Live TV Renews Old Debate

Nicole Richie of the Fox reality show "The Simple Life," prepared to announce a category of nominees on the Billboard Music Awards on Wednesday night. Standing alongside was her co-star, hotel heiress Paris Hilton, who warned: "Now Nicole, remember, this a live show, watch the bad language."

Richie paid no attention, using a vulgar substitute for the exclamation "shoot." The broadcast, which employed a five-second delay to catch obscenities, bleeped out the offending word. But Richie was one step ahead. Before Fox could hit the "dump" button again, she described her time on "The Simple Life," in which she and Hilton live with an Arkansas farm family. She repeated the word and then added one for good measure.

"Have you ever tried to get cow [expletive] out of a Prada purse?" Richie said. "It's not so [expletive] simple."

No, really... who watches this fucking shit? These two could go down on each other in Prime Time, and I wouldn't watch.

It's time to revoke a lot of free licenses that these megacorporations have with the spectrum and start breaking up the channels so everyone can have wireless broadband everywhere.

Fuck television. I want my wireless on-demand streaming content that can be collected based on intelligent agents and then forwarded to those who might share similar interests.

 Yet another bonus prize offered...

They're just piling up now, aren't they?

Having recently returned from The Sandbox, LT Smash is offering up the following...

Yes, it's a lovely long-sleeved T-shirt. He's offering that special bonus prize to the first pick to go as the result of US or Coalition military action (Saddam).

Since there's an awful lot of first roster submitted tie-breakers, this one will be broken by raffle. Should the critera (Saddam) for selecting the applicable (Saddam) casualty of war result in splitting (Saddam) hairs and debate, final judgement is (Saddam) left to LT Smash.

Thank you, LT Smash, for all you've done for our country and your continued service to the blogging community.

If you've got a blog and cheesy crap trinkets and baubles you'd like to offer up as bonus prizes for unusual or unusually bloody deaths in the Dead Pool, let me know.

Oh, and there was another $3 contributed to the prize pool as well. Let's keep those (voluntary) contributions coming.

 Acrobatics

I am watching a squirrel perform some nice acrobatics on a tree branch across the way. Birds are in the tree, chirping and shrieking at it while it gathers up seeds.

It is a very large squirrel, and it is out on a limb, but it's managing the precarious position quite well. He's doing tumbles and turns and spinning around the branch, but never falling.

I just picked up Nardo, and pointed him through the glass.

His ears went up... recognition.

"See the rat, buddy?" I said. "Go get him."

I put him on the ground, and he did a beeline for the open sliding glass door in the other room.

Mister Squirrel's day just turned to shit.

 Dictators of a feather

REUTERS: Disney dispute moves to Internet

Walt Disney Co. former board member Roy Disney has taken his case for ousting Chief Executive and Chairman Michael Eisner to the Internet with the launch of a Web site, www.savedisney.com.

Go there and read Roy's resignation letter to Prince Michael the First. (Adobe Acrobt Reader required)

Loss of morale. Loss of shareholder value. No succession plan. Drain of talent to the competition. Sacrificing long-term goals for the quick buck (and assumed graft). Stifling of debate.

It's interesting to compare Roy's gripes to Mahmoud Abbas' final resignation gripes to Arafat.

 Don't bother picking him for 2004

REUTERS: Iran cleric's Web site gives behind the scenes view

Armed with a sharp wit and a concealed camera Iran's Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi is offering Internet users a daily behind-the-scenes peek into the corridors of power in Iran.

Abtahi, a mid-ranking cleric and one of President Mohammad Khatami's most trusted aides, started his own Web site (www.webnevesht.com) last month featuring amusing anecdotes and pictures from top level meetings in the Islamic Republic.

"None of the officials are aware that I'm taking their picture," said Abtahi, who uses a tiny camera mounted on his mobile telephone to catch his colleagues unawares.

Yeah, the theocratic regime in charge of Iran is well known for their jocularity and humor, especialyl when it comes to themselves.

 Arab Chutzpah

REUTERS: OPEC wants aid if world shifts to renewable energies

You're kidding me, right?

Delegates said that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, wanted promises of aid if Kyoto spurs a shift to renewable energies like tidal, solar or wind energy at the expense of fossil fuels.

But Trittin said that the European Union only wanted to help the poorest states adapt to climate change. "If such a fund is misused for targets we don't share, because it is a voluntary fund we won't pay," he said.

Countries led by the EU have promised about $410 million extra a year to help developing countries. A Special Climate Change Fund is likely to total about $50 million a year and would be bankrupted if it were to help OPEC states.

Because as we all know, the only useful thing you can do with petroleum is burn it. That whole polymer thing, it's just a passing fad, you know.

Goddamned greedy sand-nigger schmucks.

 Five

The Friday Five is just too awful not to make fun of this week. It's been a while, you know.

1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?

   This is Texas. It's not cold here.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?

   It would involve a fireplace, a hot poker, and the people who are assholes for the rest of the year that put on a bullshit Merry Christmas facade.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?

   Yes. I tell people "Read a fucking book" when they ask me what Hannukah is about. That's usually before I pass out from the alcohol.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?

   Yes. I give them cat treats, but they keep begging for more.

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?

   A 404 message the next time I go to The Friday Five web site. Oh, and Yasser Arafat's head on a pole, abuzz with flies.

Santa can bite me.

 Memory fades

Babalu is doing a Blog Cuba Day. I was asked to write something for it, and I pulled something out of my ass too quick to remember and sent it via e-mail.

Now it's time to post, and I can't remember what it was.

Some people are amazed at some of the things I write, but what's even more amazing is the volume of material I forget or let slip through the cracks in my skull.

Maybe there's hope to recover that snarky note, and maybe there's not.

Over time, all fades to entropy. Chaos reigns.

 What's this whole Chakka Khan thing about, anyway?

For those who'd like to learn more about Channukah, the Jewish Theological Seminary has some nice resources.